Flight of the Bumblewtf
All the cool kids are posting this highly embarrassing sequence of YouTubes. Who am I to resist?
WARNING, NSFW, MAY CONTAIN BOOBIES:
Labels: boobies, Rimsky-Korsakov
posted by Dan Johnson at
11:12 AM
12 Comments:
This is wrong on so many levels...THANK YOU!
Can anyone say "trying too hard?" Lame.
Tina Guo = 听难过。
( = ting nanguo = sounds sad).
Why is this highly embarrassing? The speed metal arrangement of "Flight..." is pretty amazing.
And she's beautiful. Why the hate?
obviously SOMEONE has never heard Manowar's equally terrible/vom-inducing "arrangement":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xuXJF909bI
Thanks, Ted. That's pretty tight too although I prefer Tina's band :0)
Chris, good points! It is true that her band is pretty tight, and that she is actually a very good (and very good-looking) speed-metal cellist. This is even a surprisingly well-thought-out set of visuals for a classical crossover video.
I guess my problem is with this tiresome habit of "tweaking" an old classical chestnut by dressing it up in new pop clothes—it's such an easy, pandering cliché! And yeah, it's cool to be proud of your body, but I also tend to think that fiddleresses who show their tits are actually just making it that much harder for those who don't. This pressure is almost never on male classical musicians; why haven't we seen, say, Martin Stadtfeld's asscrack? (ANSWER: Because I am not yet head of Sony Classical.)
"...I also tend to think that fiddleresses who show their tits are actually just making it that much harder for those who don't."
Daniel, believe me, I understand your reservations. But I actually really liked Tina and her band although I probably wouldn't have posted anything if it hadn't been for the comments preceding mine.
That said, what about Karita Mattila's recent performances in Salome? She's an incredible singer and made a decision to appear very briefly nude onstage. Where does one draw the line? And who are you or I to say such a line should be drawn anyway if the female artist in question is making their own decision regarding their body?
I've run into this many times as a composer who has done a lot of collaborative work with dancers. Nudity is sometimes a part of a performance but it's not there the way it is present in pornography. And yet it can freak some audiences out no matter how you present it. Nudity instantly becomes something sexual. I just see Tina's video as being more painterly than anything else.
Ok, it's not that Tina is making it harder for aspiring speed-metal cellists who don't have perfect titties(though she certainly is), and it's not that the band isn't tight, or that whatever was dripping from her mouth didn't look convincingly enough hard-core. It's that some mash-ups just don't work. And this one simply feels bad on a number of levels. (Take this as another [non-classical]for instance, which is just all kinds of wrong - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2-Pb3WUVQ4)
Surely there's some crazy composer out there who wants to write new music for hot topless speed metal cellists. I mean, if someone's interested enough to write compositions for coffee grinders (see BoaC), there's gotta be some love for a cellist with a strong exhibitionist streak, no?
Well put. I think we need more Charlotte Moorman in this recipe, less Vannesa-Mae.
(Um, "Vanessa-Mae.")
Nam June Paik, we miss you.
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